Popular game engine Unity drops licensing fees for iOS app developers

Unity, the company behind the eponymous game rendering engine, announced on Tuesday that it will no longer be charging an $800 licensing fee to developers looking to make apps for Apple's iOS and Google's Android.

As Unity CEO David Helgason explained at the firm's Unite Nordic conference, the decision to drop fees for the tool's basic feature set is part of a push to make mobile game development more accessible, reports Pocket Gamer.

Helgason noted that his team has been looking forward to offering a no charge mobile version of Unity for some time after having already made a free option available for desktop and Web platforms.

"Mobile games development is possibly the most dynamic and exciting industry in the world," Helgason said, "and it's an honor to be able to help so many developers be so successful in fulfilling their visions and in building their businesses."

According to the company's blog, game studios and "incorporated entities" which made in excess of $100,000 last year are required to purchase a paid version of Unity 4.

A number of high-profile games are powered by Unity, including Rovio's Bad Piggies, Imangi's Temple Run 2 and Madfinger Games' upcoming Dead Trigger 2.

Source: Pocket Gamer

Tuesday's new price structure comes about two years after the company dropped a $200 fee for Indie developers, a move that Helgason said helped grow the Unity community from 13,000 devs to just under 2 million.

Although not announced at the conference, Helgason pointed out in the blog post that identical free-of-charge models will be rolling out for Microsoft's Windows 8 and BlackBerry 10 in the coming months.

Regardless of the founder's fashion choice, Unity is amazing software and a great tool. Their business model of giving away a basic version - that is completely usable for commercial purposes - is refreshing. SketchUp used to have a similar license (the free version could be used for commercial work) but that has changed in the latest version. Imagine if Adobe only required companies over a certain size to pay for CS.

I think Unity has a good license model for "professionally sized" software.

So, as far as I can tell... you drop $1500 for unity 4, and "included" in that price is a watered down "iOS Lite" development kit that has a subset of the tools that you may already be accustomed to using? Not sure if I've got this right, but it seems like non-news.

So, as far as I can tell... you drop $1500 for unity 4, and "included" in that price is a watered down "iOS Lite" development kit that has a subset of the tools that you may already be accustomed to using? Not sure if I've got this right, but it seems like non-news.

This is just the same as the normal Free vs Pro version. The free version for Windows, Linux, and Mac and Web Player all are missing those same features... so they they added in free iOS support, they also have it not supporting the normal Pro features so it matches up with all the other Free ones available.